Understanding Agricultural Producers' Willingness to Undertake Self-Monitoring of Environmental Outcomes: Results of a Choice Experiment with Colorado Agricultural Producers

If society wishes to move agricultural conservation programs from “paying for conservation practices” to “paying for environmental performance,” then monitoring will be required. Little is known about farmers’ willingness to participate in self-monitoring. Therefore, a choice experiment survey was designed to estimate participation in soil sampling for the purpose of calculating soil carbon. Results indicate that participation increases with payment levels, education level, acres owned, the belief that information from the soil carbon analysis will favor agriculture, and off-farm employment. Participation decreases with years the producer must commit to ($200/year), number of samples to be collected ($100/sample), and the age of the producer. At low payment levels ($50–100/year), even collecting a few samples elicited only 16% participation. At $2500/year, 80% would participate even though it required collecting more samples. These results suggest that farmers would participate in simple monitoring programs with payment levels independent of the monitoring data results. But these conditions pose real world challenges for actual pay-for-performance monitoring.